


12 Days of Christmas 2019 Day 3

by PatchworkIdeas



Series: GatheringFiKi 12 Days of Christmas 2019 [3]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Snow Queen Fusion, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:22:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21807373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PatchworkIdeas/pseuds/PatchworkIdeas
Summary: The cold may have taken everything from him, but Kili is not the kind of person to just lay down and weep.
Relationships: Fíli/Kíli (Tolkien)
Series: GatheringFiKi 12 Days of Christmas 2019 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1569745
Comments: 11
Kudos: 20
Collections: GatheringFiKi - 12 Days OF Christmas 2019





	12 Days of Christmas 2019 Day 3

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by GatheringFiKi's & damnitfili's gorgeous Photoset! 
> 
> Posted here with permission, and can be found on Tumblr [here](https://gatheringfiki.tumblr.com/post/189684907084/12-days-of-christmas-day-3-special-thanks-to)

* * *

Kili loved his brother.  
Fili was his whole world.  
His everything.  
His brother was kind, fair and always had a smile for him. Never had there been a pair that was closer than the two of them. Never had Fili ever left him behind.  
But even the closest brothers didn't live in each others pockets, and one day Fili left for the market with a smile on his lips. 

He never returned.

Instead the cold came. Violent storms in the middle of summer. Icy snowflakes coating everything in minutes, nothing but white, white, white all around.  
It had scared him, for Fili was out there, unprepared for this sudden strange weather. He grabbed the first coats he could find and rushed out into the cold. 

Their neighbour found him, hours later, frozen to the bone. 

Alone. 

He spent weeks in bed, carefully nursed back to health by his mother.  
The snow ceased.  
The cold remained.  
By the time he could stand for more than a few minutes, any chance of finding Fili was long gone.  
Fili was long gone.

After that, the cold felt almost fitting, like a reflection of the everlasting grief in his soul.  
But the winter never truly stopped, and rumours came to their town. Of a snow queen, a tiny figure with long blonde hair that was seen in the distance, seemingly unaffected by the cold, even controlling it.  
And Kili's blood boiled, scorching heat taking residence in his frozen heart, where only the warmth of companionship used to be.  
She was responsible. Had to be. If not for that _witch_ his brother would have come home from his trip like he always did.  
She had taken Fili from him.  
She had cursed their land to ice.  
She had taken his world from him!

And he would make her pay. Pay for it all. He would remove her heart from her body, like she had removed his, even if it was the last thing he did. 

But he had learned from his past mistake. Fili would want him to be prepared, to not rush in mindlessly.  
(Fili would also ask him not to throw his life away, for he knew his odds. But Fili wasn't _here_. Not anymore. And so Kili's only concern was taking the witch down with him.) 

Kili worked, using every penny that didn't go into food for warm coats and winter gear, a steed able to traverse the high snow and, most importantly, cold steel.  
He only had his trusy bow at home, and an arrow did little good against a being that could call and control snowstorms.  
And he wanted to see her.  
Wanted to see how the life left her eyes, like it had left Fili's, somewhere out there. Like it had left his own in the weeks bed ridden and aware, all too aware of time and hope slipping through his fingers. 

It took him years. Hard, hard years. But he was a man now and no amount of pleading from his poor mother could stay his course. He hated to leave her, but his path had been set the moment Fili was lost to them. 

So he braved the storm and half starving wolves, moving from village to village to follow rumours of the Snow Queen, who was ruling the land with an icy fist. 

And eventually he found what he needed.  
It was just a story, a castle seen for a single moment through the everlasting storm. A castle that no one had ever seen or heard of before.  
Nobody could have built it in this weather.  
But they had also believed that nobody could ever rule over snow and ice. 

It was a hard path to follow, harder still than the months before. There were steep cliffs, traitorous icy edges and icicles just waiting for his passing to fall.  
At one point, he only narrowly avoided an avalanche. 

But he found the castle.  
He found her.  
He stood in front of its gates and felt nothing.  
He had no energy left for rage, for dispair, or even for grief.  
He stroked his loyal mares mane one last time, hoping beyond hope that she might find her way back to civilisation, found a way to live.  
Then he turned around and headed for the gates. 

"Wait for me, Fili. Just a little bit longer."

The icy wind carried his whispered words away from him, lost to the storm. 

The gates weren't locked, and Kili ventured into the giant entrance hall, sword in hand and alert for any movement.  
Not finding anything, he climbed the icy stairs, his steps echoing loudly in the vast emptiness.  
He walked through the empty corridors, left more empty rooms behind, climbed higher and higher on crystal clear steps.  
This so called queen might have had a castle, but it was as barren as her heart must be. 

But then he found it.  
A throne, facing an open expanse where a wall should be.  
The wind was howling, but the stray snow flakes were only gently flurrying through the eye of the storm that had plagued their country for too long. 

Maybe the wind had hidden the sound of his steps from her?  
Or she deemed herself save in her castle of ice, and him as much beneath her notice as all the people whose lives she had destroyed.  
He surged forward, steps sure and the rage he had thought lost heating his veins one last time, burning the ice away just long enough to fulfil his purpose.  
He rounded the throne, sword in full swing, ready to end it all

And stopped. Barely. 

The trickle of blood stood in sharp contrast to the fair skin.  
But all he could see was the golden mane and the tired blue eyes. 

All he could see was his brother. 

The sword slipped from his limp hand, it's clatter deafening in the sudden silence. The wind had stopped its howling and Kili flinched back, the badum badum of his beating heart the only sound in the gaping void, in the endless expanse of years of pain and grief and a brother who was _lost_ , just a corpse under mountains and mountains of snow.  
Kili tried to summon the anger back. Tried to remember that this was a witch he was dealing with. It was not so unthinkable that she would assume the shape of his dead brother to torture him. 

But Fili just looked at him, tired, empty, curled up on himself in a throne that dwarfed him.  
He was pale, so, so pale, as if he really had spent years under ice and snow, years with nothing but ice in his veins. 

The moment lingered, a drop in time, and then it passed. 

Fili's eyes closed, as if the effort of keeping them open was more than he could bear anymore. His head fell back, and the bared throat felt like an invitation and a mockery at the same time. 

Kili didn't know what to believe. Didn't know anything, chaos swirling through his thoughts, all his careful icy walls gone like the wind. 

But he knew his brother. Knew every line of his body, the exact colour of his hair and eyes, his every movement.  
And he didn't see an imposter. Didn't see a witch playing with his emotions. 

Just his brother.  
Tired.  
Hopeless.  
Broken. 

No. 

Kili had words, crowding on his tongue and fighting for dominance, begging for release.  
But he swallowed them all. Crossed the distance between them. Tangled his hands in the golden strands and brought their foreheads together. Like he had done a thousand times before.  
Like he would do a thousand times more, in the suddenly endless future ahead.

Fili broke in his arms, sobs breaking out of the still body, hands reaching, finding and curling his ice cold body into Kili's warmth. 

He had words. And questions.  
And for the first time in years, he had Fili. 

Everything else could wait.

**Author's Note:**

> [My Tumblr](https://patchworkideas.tumblr.com/post/189686996700/gatheringfiki-the-following-ficlet-was-written)


End file.
